Welcome, I'm Anastasia Glova bringing you the Cato Daily Podcast.

Full and edited versions of our podcasts are available on our website at

W.W. Cato.org.

Presidential signing statements have traditionally been a form of what

slate senior editor Dahlia Lithwaic calls benign executive branch throat

clearing. Presidents use them to elucidate their views on legislation without bearing any actual legislative weight.

But since coming to office, President Bush has been unambiguous about his intent to interpret how new laws are to be executed, refusing to enforce, for example,

certain provisions that he determines to be unconstitutional.

What are the legal implications of the President's use of signing statements?

University of Chicago law professor and Cato adjunct scholar Richard Epstein has the answers.

What purpose do presidential signing statements serve?

A lot of it depends on who the president turns out to be.

Traditionally, their purpose was to thank various kinds of supporters to indicate the importance

of the legislation for the future of America and similar

kind of ceremonial functions.

With George Bush, the game seems to have changed a bit, and he uses it to say, I'm signing

the legislation, but I want you to know know I think some portions of it may be unconstitutional

Other portions of it I don't intend to follow and so forth so he is trying to use it to reshape the legislation the traditional view was you either go up or down with a

veto or a signature, he's trying to be able to pick and choose amongst the various parts of these

statements and I think it's probably a fairly worrisome precedent.

Bush's use of signing statements seem to catch the public by surprise,

but have lawyers ever advocated for such use before?

...